


Cloak and Dagger

by enigmaticblue



Category: Eureka
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-14
Updated: 2010-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-10 13:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/pseuds/enigmaticblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carter had started calling their little group "cloak and dagger," because they'd kept the meetings quiet, and held them away from everyone else in town. Jo had smiled, more because of Carter's hopeful expression than at the humor. It was the first time she'd smiled in days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cloak and Dagger

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the LJ community eureka_tag, for 4.01 "Founder's Day".

Carter had started calling their little group “cloak and dagger,” because they’d kept the meetings quiet, and held them away from everyone else in town. Jo had smiled, more because of Carter’s hopeful expression than at the humor. It was the first time she’d smiled in days.

 

They’d met first out of necessity, trying to piece together a picture of the changes they’d wrought. Between the five of them, they had access to nearly every document Eureka had ever generated. Carter brought arrest records and incident reports; Henry purloined historical documents and old newspaper clippings. Fargo brought information from Global’s archives.

 

Jo provided the place to meet; she didn’t feel capable of doing much more than that right now.

 

After the first meeting, however, they continued to get together, usually at Jo’s house, mostly because no one else understood. No one else in town knew Eureka as it had been, and it was a relief to let their guard down.

 

For Jo, it was a relief to be around people who didn’t expect her to be happy, who knew that she wasn’t supposed to be happy.

 

She’d lost Zane. Jo hadn’t known it would hurt this much.

 

When Jo opened the front door in response to the knock, Carter greeted her with a smile and a six-pack of beer. “I thought we could use a drink.”

 

“Come on in,” Jo replied. “Henry just got here.”

 

She watched as the men greeted each other with handshakes that turned into hugs. “Grace let you go?” Jack asked.

 

Henry shrugged. “She thinks I’m hanging out with you, letting you convert me to a baseball fan.”

 

“We can put a game on in the background,” Jack offered, his tone eager.

 

Henry laughed. “It’s Jo’s TV.”

 

Jo found the game when Jack directed her to the right channel, and then let Fargo and finally Allison inside. Fargo offered a nervous smile, and Allison gave her a hug, which Jo returned stiffly.

 

Carter and Henry sat across from each other at the kitchen table, while Allison sat so close to the sheriff that Jo could see no space between them. Fargo took his papers and spread them out on the living room floor, and Jo took the couch. She sipped her beer and listened as Carter asked, “How are Kevin and Jenna?”

 

“Good.” Allison’s smile was only slightly forced. “I still haven’t quite gotten used to Kevin being so…”

 

“Normal?” Jack suggested.

 

Allison smiled. “Yeah, I guess so. I’ve never had to deal with a teenage boy.”

 

“If you have any questions, feel free to ask,” Jack offered. “I vaguely recall what that was like.”

 

“Same here,” Henry put in. “Although probably even more vaguely than Jack.”

 

“Uh, I don’t know if I can help, but you could ask me, too,” Fargo offered from the living room.

 

Allison smiled, and Jo thought she caught the sheen of tears in Allison’s eyes. “Thank you.” She cleared her throat. “How’s Grace, Henry?”

 

“Fine.” Henry threw down his pen and leaned back in his chair. “I can glean information from these records, but it still doesn’t tell me how I proposed, or what made me fall in love with her in the first place.”

 

Jo suspected that Henry’s outburst was only the tip of the iceberg. They had all returned to the present day to find that certain key relationships had been completely changed. In this world, Tess Fontana had never moved to Australia, Kevin had never been autistic, and Fargo had never been a screw-up.

 

In this world, Zane had never proven himself, and had never fallen in love with Jo, and so had never had proposed marriage.

 

Jo hadn’t known it was possible for her heart to break so completely.

 

“How’s Tess?”

 

“Wondering what’s wrong with me,” Carter replied to Allison’s question, keeping his voice low. Jo pretended to be engrossed in her incident reports. “I keep—I don’t know.”

 

“Jack,” Henry said quietly.

 

Jo glanced up to meet Fargo’s eyes; he appeared equally freaked out by the conversation, and Jo suddenly remembered that Julia had never come to Eureka. Fargo had never met her, so they’d never been together.

 

She wasn’t the only one struggling; Jo tried to remember that.

 

“I’m trying to figure out how to break up with her,” Carter admitted in a low voice, and Jo knew that he didn’t want her to overhear. “I don’t even know why we’re still together right now—but she does.”

 

“I’m sorry, Jack.” Jo glanced up in time to see Allison put a hand over Carter’s, for Henry to clap Carter on the shoulder.

 

Jo had always known that Carter was more approachable, but Jo hadn’t known what she was missing until she’d lost Zane.

 

Zane had been the first to touch her in a long time, and Jo _missed_ that more than she could say.

 

“Hey.”

 

Jo glanced up, meeting Fargo’s eyes. He offered a sympathetic grimace and a shrug, and Jo smiled, wondering what the hell had happened to make her feel so close to Fargo of all people.

 

“Hey, Jo,” Carter called, after the silence had gone on for a few minutes. “I’ve decided to release Zane. Do you want to be the one to deliver the good news?”

 

Jo hesitated, and then managed a smile. “Yeah. Is tomorrow soon enough?”

 

“Sure thing.”

 

And maybe this was cloak and dagger, Jo thought. Maybe these were the only people in the world who understood, but at least they were good people.

 

It could have been worse.


End file.
